Fort Bragg City Hall never got the radiation monitoring equipment on its roof that was suggested following the Japanese nuclear disaster. And now City Hall”s roof is also losing its long-standing particulate matter air detector.
City Hall turned out to be the wrong spot to measure air quality for Fort Bragg, said Chris Brown, Air Pollution Control Officer for the Mendocino County Air Quality Management District. The device registered mostly salt in the air, no surprise with it being in one of the highest spots in town and directly in the path of ocean winds.
The new location is Fort Bragg High School, where air issues more relevant to the health of local residents can be measured, Brown said.
“The school is downwind of a good chunk of the town. It”s farther from the ocean,” said Brown. “And we are tired of everything rusting.”
Brown said the particulate matter monitoring will be running later this year.
“That”s when people start to fire up their woodstoves,” said Brown.
The county has two air monitors in Ukiah and another in Willits. Information is posted online at www.mendoair.org.
The county does not have any radiation monitoring equipment, but one had been planned by the EPA shortly after the Japanese disaster. Those plans were nixed as the EPA reported a lesser radiation threat than feared, despite questions from critics and several understatements of the extent of the crisis by officials in Japan.
“We do not have the funding to purchase or operate a radiation monitor. The purchase price is hundreds of thousands of dollars and the annual operation costs are near $50,000,” Brown said.
There is one in Humboldt County, which had online readings available from March until May. That web link no longer exists.
“The Eureka site is funded by DOE/PG&E because their used fuel is stored at the decommissioned power plant at Humboldt Bay,” said Brown.
Brown said at the height of the Japanese nuclear disaster, some people were very worried, but official Environmental Protection Agency reports showed no levels high enough for concern. By the time it reached the U.S., it had become so dispersed that it never even raised the normal levels of background radiation, according to the EPA.
“I only have the information they provide and what they tell me and everything I am hearing and everything I heard was that this did not rise to a level of concern,” he said.
Smoking, cell phones and even air travel can expose one to higher levels of radiation than the Japanese disaster did to the West Coast, according to news investigations of the topic.
“In response to the Japanese nuclear incident, EPA accelerated and increased sampling frequency and analysis to confirm that there were no harmful levels of radiation reaching the U.S. from Japan and to inform the public about any level of radiation detected,” the EPA website reports.
“After a thorough data review showing declining radiation levels, on May 3, EPA returned to the routine RadNet sampling and analysis process for precipitation, drinking water and milk. As always, our 24/7 air monitoring stations continue to measure radiation levels, alerting scientists to even slight changes,” the website says.
During normal operations (like now), EPA analyzes precipitation samples every month, and drinking water and milk samples every three months. However, critics have questioned whether the EPA follows through on rainwater and milk testing, and whether that information is made available in a timely fashion.
A July 11 investigative piece by Gerald Pollet, which can be found at www.counterpunch.org, reports high levels of radiation in rainwater, and EPA refusal to divulge information about the sampling program.
Email to the EPA press office had not been returned in time to be included in this article.
The location and details about EPA radiation monitoring can be found at; http://www.epa.gov/narel/radnet/,
Email Frank Hartzell at frankhartzell@gmail.com.
